The Philippians had more than enough reason for worry and anxiety in the hostility of their neighbors and the threat of persecution (1.28; 3.1; 4.1). To them Paul offered the following words of comfort and hope.
Don’t worry about anything is literally “in nothing be anxious.” The verb rendered worry here is the same verb used in 2.20. There it has the positive sense of “to care” (for someone), but here is has the negative sense of anxiety, a lack of trust in God’s care (Matt 6.25-34; cf. 1 Peter 5.7). Don’t worry about anything is often expressed idiomatically, for example, “Do not eat up your own heart,” “Don’t let your thoughts kill you,” or “Don’t let your thoughts take away your strength.”
What Paul goes on to say involves a rather long and complex clause. It is advisable to restructure this clause in order to bring out the meaning more clearly. The clause may be translated literally as “but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Revised Standard Version). There is an obvious contrast between the phrase “in everything” here and “in nothing” in the preceding clause. “In everything” is sometimes taken in the sense of “always,” denoting time (Moffatt), and sometimes in the meaning of “in every situation” or “in every circumstance of life” (Bruce cf. Bible en français courant Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). The majority of translations, however, take it in the sense of “all things,” that is, all one’s interests.
There is still another possibility. “In everything” may be connected with the two following nouns, and so have the meaning “in all prayer and supplication” (Vulgate). This combination is more in line with modern speech, and is apparently the one favored by Good News Translation. However, Good News Translation does not regard these two nouns as representing two distinct forms of prayer. It is true that the word generally rendered “prayer” is commonly used in the general sense of man’s approach to God, and the word rendered “supplication” is normally employed in the more restricted sense of making request for one’s own needs or the needs of others, but in Paul’s letters the two words are often used interchangeably. Consequently, there seems to be no need to press for a precise difference between the two terms; they are linked together to convey inclusiveness, and so Good News Translation renders in all your prayers. The phrase in all your prayers may, of course, be rendered as “whenever you pray.” In some languages this would be expressed as “whenever you talk to God.”
The literal “let your requests be made known to God” is a third person imperative construction which must be restructured in many languages. One can rephrase it as “make your requests known to God” (Moffatt New English Bible), or, even better, a straightforward “present your needs to God” (New American Bible), “tell God about the things you want to ask him for” (Barclay), or simply ask God for what you need. The word “requests” usually denotes things asked for rather than the specific act or form of prayer. What you need may be expressed doubly in some languages as “what you should have but do not have,” or “what is important for you, but which you still do not have.”
Always asking him with a thankful heart (literally, “with thanksgiving”) is the accompanying attitude which should go with every act of prayer, an attitude arising from a remembrance of God’s goodness in the past and a realization of his blessings in the present. In Paul’s view, a thankful heart is an important element in prayer; this is evident in his fondness for pairing “prayer” and “thanksgiving” together (Col 4.2; 1 Thes 5.17-18; 1 Tim 2.1; cf. 1 Thes 3.9-10). Asking him with a thankful heart may be expressed as a combination of two verb phrases, for example, “always express your thanks to him, when you ask him for something,” “whenever you pray to him, be sure to express thanks,” or “… to say that you are thankful to him.”
Quoted with permission from Luo, I-Jin. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1977. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .